


Your tombstone heart

by noisette



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-15
Updated: 2013-03-15
Packaged: 2017-12-05 10:08:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/721857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noisette/pseuds/noisette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Katniss doesn't think about camera angles or impressing sponsors, she doesn't even worry about leading on a boy who may or may not like her. Maybe because Harry isn't a boy and she stopped being a girl the moment she took a life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your tombstone heart

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a tumblr post that posited Harry's prophecy could've meant something else entirely. Not epilogue compliant for either original material, but hugely spoilerific for both.

The goose feathers tickle as they brush her cheek. Her arm trembles. (Her arm never trembles.) That, right there in her sights, is no wily fox. Capitol-mandated tortures have acquainted her with plenty of ghosts on her wild peregrinations, but few ever looked so real. 

Today must be a day for firsts, because sure enough that's a man trekking through her forest. He's got Gale's inky hair and Peeta's uneven gait; reason enough to duck behind the nearest oak tree and keep out of sight. Trying to catch her breath is all Katniss can do to keep from loosing an arrow at the cloaked figure. It's too kind as it is, but truth be told, she hasn't killed _people_ since the war. (Since Cain.) That's one winning streak she doesn't want to break. The newer settlers in District Twelve make it easy on her; they keep out of the way. They marvel when she passes and whisper about the Mockingjay behind her back, but they've stopped leaving offerings at her door and few dare speak to her now. It's better if they think her aloof and selfish. 

They know full well not to venture into the wood; there's little enough to hunt. With trains on the move again, it's easier to buy food in the marketplace than pluck it from the wild. Katniss alone stands apart in that regard—and now she has company. Pulse roaring in her ears, she flattens her back to an ancient fir and chances another quick glance into the gorge.

The man has untied his cloak and laid it down on a severed stump. He must be city-fare if he's too fine to sit in the dirt. And yet he doesn't look it. His clothes are worn to the point of shabbiness and his glasses are too round, too unfashionable for the Capitol. Not a refugee, then. A drifter? Whatever he is, this is not his territory to walk. 

Katniss tries to grasp her courage with both hands, but in the end it's a tumble of rocks beneath her boot that gives her away. 

"Who's there?" The man's call proves reedy, but also oddly accented. He must have come from far to the north. "Hello? Show yourself!"

He's standing with a short stick in his hand when Katniss makes her presence known. "That's some weapon. Careful you don't put someone's eye out." Her bow still hangs from one hand, arrow shaft squeezed tight between two fingers. "What do you think you're doing here?"

"I could ask you the same thing." He hesitates, but the short stick is slowly lowered and secreted back into a pocket sewn into the inside of his tired, shapeless overcoat. 

"This is my district." Or it was, before the war. Katniss isn't here to quibble at details. "If you're looking for a park, you'd better look elsewhere."

"Last I heard, this was a free country. Apparently a mockingjay took human form and upset the ancient ways..." A hand waves, lackadaisical. "I confess I haven't kept up with local politics for some time." The cock of his head is all Peeta. The resemblance cuts Katniss to the core. "You know... you'd have an easier time persuading me if you weren't standing there, arrow in hand." 

He must be joking. "I'm not trying to persuade you," Katniss huffs. "This wood's only good for one thing. You want to take a stroll, be my guest, but if you end up skewered don't count on me to drag you into the Seam."

The man's smile doesn't falter; it doesn't tremble at the implicit threat. "Thank you for the warning."

"Your funeral."

"Wait." Dead leaves crackle under his feet, but Katniss knows he still stands a long way away. He's no threat. "Do you have a name?"

All of Panem knows her name. From what they told her before she left the Capitol, the legend of her victory against President Snow is even traveling past their borders. She is become the symbol for all rebels everywhere; the same cannot be said for those sacrificed. 

"My name is Katniss." Not the Girl of Fire, not the Mockingjay. "Not that it matters." She stalks away before the stranger can offer his. If he has sense, he'll be gone by sundown.

*

He doesn't go. Katniss spends two days trekking the forest without catching anything and in that time, she nearly crosses the stranger's path twice more. On the third day, her kitchen empty, she returns to the wood with bow and arrow and a knife thrust into her boot. 

"You're scaring away the game," she shouts down from the ridge. 

The stranger has set up a tent, though where he found the materials Katniss doesn't know and doesn't care to ask. He smiles when he sees her. "Oh! Hello, again. I'm very sorry... if you'd like, I can make it up to you with a cup of tea?"

"Tea?" In the middle of the forest? Three days ago, the man only had a cloak and a stick to defend himself with. Now he's putting down roots?

He nods gaily. "Yes. It's brewing as we speak." He gestures her with a jerk of chin. "Come down. You're not scared, are you?" Gale would taunt her just like that, if he were here. He's not. Katniss left him in the Capitol and that's for the best. No use digging up old hurt when there's such fresh agony to be felt. 

She watches the man disappear into his tent and it's that arrogance, that conviction that she'll just stalk off in fear of him that has Katniss hiking down the hillside. Nettles and dirt cling to her clothes, but she's given up trying to look like she belongs in the civilized world a long time ago. Now the world leaves her alone—except when it invades her forest and heckles her with quips. 

"Your parents never teach you to be wary of strangers?" 

The man turns, grinning at her over his shoulder. Up close, Katniss discovers his eyes are green and liquid, and there's a scar on his forehead that looks like it might've caused him pain. "Seeing as they did all their teaching from beyond the grave, well... Here you go." A cup is held out, small and fragrant, vapors of steam eddying around his face. 

"You didn't give me a name last time." _I didn't wait around long enough to hear it._

Surprise is obvious on the man's face. "You don't--" The stranger seems to catch himself. "I'm sorry," and he sounds it, too, "you don't know who I am?"

Katniss doesn't bother concealing the sharp arch of a brow. "Should I?" 

That throws him, for some reason. "No." A hasty headshake. "No, I suppose not. I only thought, since you found your way to my door..." He trails off and though Katniss badly wants to tell herself he's simple, something in his tepid smile suggests the contrary. 

"You don't have a door." It's worth pointing out; the tent's hemmed by a drooping curtain and little else. 

The stranger follows Katniss' gaze to his modest accommodation, as if noticing it for the first time. "So I don't. I'll remedy that. Please, have a seat." There's hardly room enough for both of them under the canopy, but Katniss has never been more comfortable than when making do with little. 

"You're not Capitol." 

"No, I'm Harry," the man says, grinning. "I, um, I hail from slightly further afield than the Capitol."

Katniss frowns. "Further... west?" Everyone knows there's only water that way. The ocean swallowed islands and continents whole early in the past century. Perhaps there were warnings and the people who lived there had time to flee to safety; Katniss doubts that. 

"East," Harry tells her, smile dimming. "There was an island... It doesn't matter. It was a long time ago." He can't be more than twenty or twenty-five. Katniss doesn't point that out. If Harry wants to pretend he's older and wiser, that's his prerogative. He nearly chokes on his first slurping sip. "Oh, I forgot to ask if you take sugar in your tea. Do you? I think I have some lying around..."

"Sugar?" The last time Katniss tasted sugar, she was in the Capitol, on display before a coterie of painted faces. 

Harry has the good sense to look contrite. "I've learned to be resourceful." It would suit better if that was a lie. Somehow, Katniss doesn't think so. She accepts the sugar, half curious to see if it's the real thing.

It is: as white as snow and tooth-achingly sweet. She can't drink more than a sip of her tea once she's stirred it in. 

*

A rabbit dangles from the line. If she had any sense, she'd go home with it or make a fire and eat it fresh. If she had sense, she wouldn't be retracing her steps to Harry's tent, asking for trouble. 

The first thing to catch the eye is how much the tent has grown since her last visit. It was only a few days ago and yet the canopy has doubled; four pillars support it high off the ground, where before there was only a single, central pole. Harry's brazier gives off a vague tendril of pale smoke. It doesn't smell of charcoal. 

"You're back." Harry appears behind her, cloak dangling from one hand. His grin begs for a punch, but Katniss bites back the urge when she notices his gaze casting down the length of her body. "And you've brought lunch! That's terrific." Right. She came with good intentions. It wouldn't do to spoil the illusion that she's a little more than a savage. Very little more.

"I noticed you don't hunt." Her lips slant, approximating a smile; she doesn't try to show teeth because it's too much like what the cameras expected of her. "Too busy building your forest home, were you?"

Harry rolls his shoulders into a shrug. "I can be a bit finicky when it comes to living arrangements. Like having a bit of space, I suppose." He peels back the curtain. (There's still no door.) "Would you like to come in?"

It feels like an invitation weightier than the last one. Katniss squints into the tent. She doesn't have to spoil her eyesight very hard: there are gas lamps glimmering in the shadows and the warm, red glow of an iron brazier that Harry must have salvaged from one of the many ruins in the Seam throws gentle waves of heat. Where he found the cushions on the floor is an entirely different question. 

"Someone should probably show you how to skin a rabbit anyway," Katniss mutters and steps inside. 

Turns out Harry's not so fine that he won't get his hands dirty. He pitches in quickly, helping with the cleaning and carving of the catch, though he lets Katniss roast it on a spit. Something about the act seems to turn his skin a little green. Weird guy. 

"You said you came from the east... Eurasia?"

Harry shakes his head. "Not that far east. And it doesn't matter, I haven't been back there in ages. Doubt I'd recognize it if I returned."

Fat drips into the fire, crackling and bright. "You don't have family back there? Friends?" It's none of her business, but better to talk about Harry's enigmatic past than her own. 

"Not anymore." Harry perches over the fire. "How about it? Think it's done?"

It's not, but they eat it anyway, even if the meat's slightly stringy. Harry has an appetite and he doesn't prove too fastidious to keep from licking his fingers. Katniss looks away before he can catch her staring. She doesn't understand why he hasn't moved into the Seam; it's strange enough that he's picked Twelve for his home, but there's nothing about him that says he's meant to live far and away from people. He obviously goes into town to buy food and tools. His makeshift home can't have grown on its own.

They chase the rabbit with tea. Katniss doesn't take sugar in her cup this time; it's better. The bitter brew makes her think of Haymitch and his ever-present flask. 

"Getting dark soon," Harry muses after a while, his shoulder nudging hers. 

Dusk's come quickly, blanketing the forest and stirring the rust-tinted leaves. The wind's been picking up for a while, too. _There's going to be a storm tonight_ , Katniss finds herself thinking. "Should be heading off..." She makes no move to rise. Her cup is already empty and her hunger's been slaked. 

"You could," Harry starts. His warm breath gusts over her cheek. 

Katniss stands before he can finish the thought. "I'll see you around." Her heart's in her throat as she stalks away from the tent. She barely even notices the rain until she's ankle-deep in mud, hair sticking to her face. It's a small price to pay for freedom. 

*

Teaching Harry to hunt proves a challenge. He's slow to release the arrow and often distracted by the skipping of rabbits or the flutter of bird wings in the crooked tree branches. He's lousy with snares, his hands too slow and too clumsy. But what he lacks in skill, he more than makes up for in enthusiasm. Katniss finds herself snorting back laughter despite her best intentions. 

At the end of the day, their measly catch counts two squirrels and a single quail. Harry declares himself pleased. 

"Lucky your name never came out of the hat," Katniss drawls, shaking her head. 

"What hat is that?" He's been doing it all day, acting like he doesn't know about the Games or the war; like he hasn't yet figured out that the yoke on Katniss' shoulders is slick with the blood of children. 

Katniss shrugs, her muddy boots slogging through the mud. "Never mind." That's been her role all afternoon. Doesn't matter that they're tiptoeing around each other: better this than to present herself as some kind of savior. She was only good in front of a camera lens because Peeta's life depended on it. 

It's Harry's turn to fix their dinner. Katniss sits back, fletching new arrows while he tries to make sense of chopping up their catch. 

"They're already dead. You don't need to be so forceful."

"I doubt they mind," Harry huffs, pushing his glasses higher up his nose with the back of a blood-smeared hand. "You're welcome to do it yourself."

"You have to learn." He really doesn't; clearly he's lasted this long without knowing how to skin rodents, but Katniss has nothing to do except traipse through the forest or retreat to her empty house. Pestering Harry is by far the better choice. 

Harry points his knife at her with a lax hand. "You're a hard woman to like, Katniss Everdeen."

Katniss' gaze flicks over to him, two parts confused to one part hostile. That's—not something she's heard before. No one ever calls her woman. Even her closest allies dubbed her 'girl' – as if anyone who lived through war and famine could possibly have retained a sliver of innocence. Another Capitol lie. No one's ever said they liked her, save maybe for Peeta and Gale, but then they wanted things from her she couldn't give. Katniss shuffles over. "Here... You have to shave off the skin, leave the meat." Harry's hand stills beneath hers. He doesn't release the knife. (He's learning.)

The iron tang of blood hangs thick in the air around them, but Harry's clothes smell clean, his skin beckons like Capitol sheets. Katniss finds her body canting into the warmth of him without any input from her brain. It's no use pulling away; there may be space in the tent for two, but the cold seeps in all the same. She's been on her own so long. 

"That's it. Now you, um, spit it and leave it to cook." It's a struggle not to meet Harry's eyes. It shouldn’t be.

Harry tilts a little against her side. Their eyes meet accidentally and it takes Katniss a moment to realize that her hand is still clutching his. No wonder: counting the freckles of gold in his eyes is all kinds of distracting. She looks away, swallowing hard.

She leaves it to Harry to do the rest. "Excellent. Right. Roast squirrel sounds delicious."

They don't know each other well enough that any meal shared could possibly count as relaxed, but tonight feels aware of every crackle of wood in the brazier, every stray glance being short her way. Eventually, she has to break the silence. "That scar," she says, throwing caution to the wind. "How did you come by it?"

Harry shrugs. He never seems to take offense when she asks impertinent questions, only sometimes he'll sidestep an answer. He's very good at that. "I don't much remember, to be honest. I was very young."

"It looks... well, like a bolt of lightning." She feels stupid saying as much, but every time she's glimpsed the mark through the riotous curls of Harry's tangled hair, she thought of the Games and the artificial storms once used to set her running. "Looks like it hurt." 

"I imagine it did," Harry answers, smiling absently. 

It's hard to suspect a guy who smiles like that. Who steals sidelong glances but never asks questions. And in the spaces he leaves, in the silence between their stilted gunfire-bursts of conversation, Katniss begins hearing her own voice.

"There was a story my dad used to tell me," she says, some twelve days into their uneasy truce. The kindling crackles in the fire; tonight it hasn't rained, so they're sitting outside, with the moonlit sky for a roof. "A story about a boy with a lightning scar... Guess it was a fairytale, really, though not so much with the fairies, as I recall..." She slides a glance to Harry, expecting him to laugh.

He doesn't. "I don't think I know it. Could you, I mean... does it have a happy ending?"

"Why?"

"Because if it doesn't, I'd rather not hear it," Harry answers, his lips quirking into a smile. "I can't stand sad stories."

Another thing they have in common, Katniss muses. "Well, from what I remember, it was a story about wizards and magic... Those usually end happily, right?" And if this one didn't, Katniss will make up the epilogue. 

*

The first time she wakes in the tent, her first instinct isn't fear but confusion, because at some point during the night, Harry must have ceded his bed to her. She finds him in a nest of blankets on the floor, a furrow in his brows. He doesn't answer when she calls his name, but he stirs awake as soon as her hand finds his shoulder. 

That's when it happens. Katniss doesn't think about camera angles or impressing sponsors, she doesn't even worry about leading on a boy who may or may not like her. Maybe because Harry isn't a boy and she stopped being a girl the moment she took a life. Their lips meet chastely, but the kiss is anything but. Harry's exhale fans against her cheek, all warm and bizarrely pleasant. It's nothing like doing it before an audience, in a muddy cave, with her life on one side of the scales and Peeta's on the other. 

Katniss props herself on one arm, uses the other to push Harry down onto his back and sets about erasing any point of similarity between this first kiss and her last. Harry's riotous, jet-black air knots in her fingers, eliciting a soft moan. His tongue probes lightly against her lips and Katniss somehow knows to open her mouth to him. Morning breath be damned, she wants this, whatever _this_ is. 

On some low, primal level she must know, because her skin feels too tight and her lungs are practically burning when she pulls away. She sucks air in through her mouth, but it doesn't seem to be enough. Mercifully, Harry seems to be in no better shape. He looks so different without his glasses. He even blinks a couple of times, as if he can't see her clearly. 

"Do you want," Katniss starts to ask, at the precise same time when Harry says, "—sorry." 

It's not the sobering rejection it should be. Katniss can't help think the pressure of Harry's palm on the small of her back has something to do with the why. "Nothing to be sorry about," she murmurs, and kisses him again before better judgment can get in the way. 

Harry's body is all angles, but he's far from ropey. Katniss feels his biceps tighten as he puts his arms around her; it should be worrying, but she's never felt trapped by his presence and she's not about to start now. Her legs drop to either side of his hips, straddling him. Harry starts to say something, but Katniss is just getting the hang of this kissing thing and doesn't let him finish. Mere moments later, as she shifts forward, she understands what he was going to warn her about.

A girl doesn't grow up in the Seam and not know what goes on when men and women share blankets. Katniss drags in a hitching breath, but she moves no further. "Do you want," she asks again and this time there's no follow-up, no interruption, just the silence that comes with fumbling hands tugging clothes out of the way. 

Teeth trace the shell of her ear, forcing a shiver from her feverish body. Rough hands palm narrow hips, dragging pants to mid-thigh. Harry laughs against her mouth. "Slow down," he begs, "we've the time."

But that's a lie. Katniss knows it's a lie. She makes a show of letting him divest her of her sweater and shirt, and if he doesn't mind the stench of her sweat, then neither will she. This is no place for perfumed, pampered Capitol puppets. Her braid comes undone under Harry's deft fingers and she feels his cock twitch against her inner thigh, as if the sight alone is so affecting. 

There's too much of that unspoken _thing_ that used to hover in Peeta's eyes, so Katniss pulls him to her and Harry proves he can do more than stare. His teeth and tongue are particularly skillful when he takes her nipple between his lips. Molten heat slicks out of her as muscles tighten in anticipation. Someone is begging, saying "yes, yes" and it takes Katniss a moment to realize that it's her. 

Harry spills them onto the blankets, fingers like claws digging into her hips. It would be scary, if not for the way he's looking at her. Katniss steals another kiss, fingers knotting tightly into his hair, then lets him do what he will. She doesn't even try to steal another peek at his cock, hard and hot whenever it brushes her skin. She'll feel it soon enough. The thought makes her flush. 

Her own hands cover her breasts, pinching where Harry's teeth were only just nibbling on the hardened nubs. It's all she can do to keep from arching off the blankets when Harry's lips trace a meandering path down to the thatch of hair at the apex of her thighs. 

He hesitates only a second and through the haze of arousal, Katniss catches his eye. She nods fervently; can't speak and probably wouldn't know what to say if she could. Begging is not in her repertoire. 

The first brush of tongue to her swollen, slick cunt is relief and agony. Is heaven. Katniss cants her hips, desperate to take more. She hears Harry chuckle low in his throat, but the sound is muffled and soon lost to the obscene, wet noises of his mouth on her. Of his tongue inside her. Toes curling into the bedding, Katniss sinks a hand into his raven hair, guiding Harry where she needs him most. 

His moans are nothing if not appreciative. She barely even notices when his fingers slip inside, two from the beginning and she's only done this once before and it should hurt, but fuck if she can feel anything other than longing. She's never been greedier for anyone in her life. (That's arousal talking; she's clearly taken leave of her senses.) 

Harry gives her all she asks for. Deftly, eagerly, he licks and suckles at her clit until the desire thrumming beneath her skin detonates like a supernova. Her thighs clamp tightly around his ears. Dimly, Katniss finds herself hoping she isn't hurting him, but then pleasure takes her over and she's gone. There's no up or down, no regret in the breathless quivers that jostle her limbs.

When she drops back to the ground, it's to the gentle stroke of Harry's palm cupping her mound as if to gentle her descent. "Alright?" he asks.

Rather than answer, Katniss pulls him to her and kisses him hard. It takes her a moment to realize that the salt she's tasting on his lips is her own desire; the thought is heady, enough to make her gush hotly all over his fingers. He settles above her gently, his slick, hard dick nudging her belly. She didn't notice before, must've been too caught up in her own pleasure, but Harry is fairly well-endowed. The Peacekeepers who'd occasionally flash their cocks at school girls in the Seam or who pissed in full view of the locals are put to shame. 

Something of her hesitation must show, because Harry offers quickly: "We don't have to." His hips arch back a little, weight shifting so he's balancing on his knees rather than letting Katniss bear his weight.

What's that about? She's not some shrinking violet. She can handle him. "Anyone complain before?" 

Harry actually blushes. "No. But, um, you wouldn't be the first to refuse—"

"Come here." She won't let Harry be selfless. Even if this is all fairly new, it doesn't take a genius to figure out reciprocity is probably expected. Harry gave her something she's only rarely managed on her own. She can share that gift; she can be magnanimous. 

Slowly, maybe even reluctantly, Harry lets his body sink into hers. There's not as much shifting and fumbling as Katniss thought there would be. In the end, he only drops a hand down to his cock and Katniss, trying to help, pins both feet against the floor; with a subtle press and a held breath, Harry's cock slips into her cunt. The burn of the stretch is nowhere near painful. It lessens even more when Harry's knuckles brush her clit, sending warm tendrils of pleasure arcing through her body. 

"You're so tight," he breathes, "oh, Merlin. Oh—"

Katniss decides she'll pretend she didn't hear that. It's not like they know a whole lot about each other, so it's not outside the realm of possibility that Harry's interests are more fluid and cosmopolitan than hers. But still, she's not going to think about that when he's inside her. 

"I need to—is it okay if I move?" Harry pulls back a fraction, his damp hair brushing her forehead. "Am I hurting you?"

"Not by a long shot." And if any doubt still lingers, Katniss rolls her hips up and hard against his, inners muscles clenching around his cock. It doesn't take much more to prompt Harry to action.

He keeps up a steady, shallow pace for a while, until it becomes too much. Until he gets that gentleness is not something Katniss wants. Her nails rake hard enough down his back to leave welts in the flushed, sweat-slick skin. It's a message easily decoded and Harry doubles his efforts. He gives up treating her like she'll break; his teeth even find the joint of her neck and shoulder, sinking in with merciless intent. 

Katniss bucks, heat surging through her. She didn't think she'd be able to come again, but Harry seems to be robbing her of the choice. Every hard thrust takes her that much closer to the edge, every harsh moan threatens to put her over. She's almost there when Harry pulls himself up on his arms and starts pounding in earnest. It changes the angle, cock pressing against some part of her that makes her feel at once full and aching. It's enough. 

Harry collapses onto her with a final, jerking thrust. Warm breaths scorch her neck. It should be uncomfortable, to be so pinned under a man's body, but Harry cradles her in his arms and kisses her lips, her hair. He calls her "beautiful" and "gorgeous" and he never once says _I love you._

*

She should, she thinks, feel cheapened by the act. When she goes home, when she changes her clothes and washes away the traces of semen drying on her thighs, she tells herself she should feel guilty. Women who sleep around are known for their loose ways all over the Seam. They're rumored to have no scruples; to sleep with Peacekeepers as a means of earning their daily bread. They're traitors and they're reviled.

But the Peacekeepers are gone and Katniss can't remember the last time she cared what anyone thought of her. (That's a lie. She remembers; that time came to an end not so long ago in the Capitol, when Prim—It's just that she just can't afford to think of that now.) Her reflection in the mirror seems almost defiant. She only worries things might get awkward once she's back inside the clearing and creeping closer to Harry's lair. 

He steps out to meet her, his grin ear-splitting and his hands warm on her cheeks when he kisses her mouth. "I have a surprise for you," he announces, seizing her wrists. 

"You took down a boar all by yourself," Katniss ventures, though she knows it's unlikely and Harry seems to care little about hunting. She figured out that he was humoring her three days into her attempt to teach him. Somehow, he manages to feed himself without laying snares or stalking wild creatures through the underbrush. So much the better; killing is not for everyone. 

The surprise turns out to be a pudding of some kind. Katniss eyes it speculatively as Harry takes the cauldron off the brazier and carefully scoops up the bowfuls. "It's chocolate," he explains.

"And that stuff floating in it?"

He rolls his eyes, waving Katniss' doubts aside like they're unwarranted. "Just try it."

Despite her better judgment, Katniss does. She only takes a small spoonful, chewing speculatively before she dares to swallow. "It tastes like... Some kind of fruit?"

"Peaches and pineapples," Harry tells her proudly.

Where does he get peaches and pineapples from? The question hovers, unanswered, at the forefront of Katniss' mind even as she occupies her mouth with another bite. It's good, but too much like what she might have been served in the Capitol. She's glad when Harry offers up a plate of cold cuts. These, at least, she knows were bought in the Seam. They have that rough, freshly butchered look that only a hefty cleaver can offer. 

They talk a little about their day, but as soon as Harry declares he's had enough, Katniss finds her thoughts drifting. She doesn't know how to offer herself up to him, so in the end she just sets her own plate aside and loops a hand behind his neck. He follows easily. 

This time, they make it to his bed. Katniss undresses before Harry's eyes, then demands he should do the same. It's no surprise to see how quickly he obliges. 

"Can I keep my glasses on?"

Amused, Katniss tells him he can. "Not that you don't feel your way along spectacularly without them..." She tumbles him into bed and presses his knees apart until he catches on. His green eyes track her every move as she slowly sinks to the ground. "Turnabout is fair play, don't you think?" She doesn't realize she's teasing until Harry accuses her of it with a breathless exhale. ("Brazen hussy," he says, but it's not an insult. It's too sweet for that.)

This is something she's wanted to do since Johanna told her about it, out of curiosity if nothing else. It quickly turns out that Harry is perfectly willing to let her practice, the heft of his cock far less intimidating when he's simply slicking her fist. 

"Please," Harry moans, "I need—" And then he stops talking altogether because Katniss' tongue darts out to taste the pearly white fluid beading on the flushed cockhead and his arms give out.

Harry rolls his hips, but only a little, only in so far as he can't help himself. He does comb gentle fingers through her hair after a while, as well, but he doesn't her urge to hurry her ministrations. Katniss has free rein and she can decide how much or how little of his cock she'll take into her mouth. She discovers that Harry keens particularly loudly if she strokes his sac with her fingers just so. His breaths also tangle in his throat if she jerks the long, flushed shaft as she circles the cockhead with her tongue. Sometimes she gets it right and his response is imploring and explosively needy, other times he sucks air through his teeth and squirms a little, as if in sign that she should ease up a little. She quickly loses track of time. 

Her only warning that he might have reached the end of his tether comes when Harry's fingers start squeezing insistently at her wrist. He's past the point of speech, his breaths loud in the stuffy tent. Katniss pulls away, resting her cheek on his thigh as she strokes him to completion. It doesn't take much to make him unravel, only a few swipes of her fingers, and it's a beautiful sight to witness. To unleash.

A string of come lashes her cheek. It's warmer and saltier than she anticipated. She brushes it off as Harry looks on, licks her palm. 

"You're impossible," Harry chides fondly. His hands would be hauling her up and onto the bed if there was any strength left in him. As it is, Katniss crawls up on her own merits, levering this way and that until she can fit beside him over the rumpled bedding. 

It's a while before Harry can make it up to her. Maybe she's not the only one keeping score. 

*

Just because it becomes routine doesn't mean the sense of excitement diminishes in any way. Katniss still hunts sometimes during the day, except now she feels the memory of last night's exploits pull and ache within her as she stalks her prey. Harry still cooks for them in the evenings; he's even getting better about skinning whatever rodents Katniss plucks from the wood. And if they hurry to bed after they've finished, so what. Katniss will get off once, sometimes three times a night and wake up cocooned in warm arms. (She doesn't sleep enough for nightmares.)

One morning, she wakes to Harry's stiff length pressed against her ass and she mounts him again before breakfast. 

It's an easy dance to keep up with partner who knows nothing about her past and doesn't talk at all about his own. They exist in the here and now and Katniss knows she should be satisfied with that. Trouble is, questions keep creeping into her thoughts in the evenings, when, exhausted, they fall into bed together and Harry takes to stroking runes down her naked stomach. 

Eventually, one query slips out: "Harry? Your accent isn't very... I don't think I've heard anyone talk like you before." 

Harry's fingertips still on the curve of her right breast, his palm flattening out over the gentle slope of her ribcage. "I suppose you haven't, no. It's how people talk where I'm from—or it was." The place where he's from lies far to the east: it used to be an island but Harry can't say if it's still there. He'll admit it might have sunk into the ocean while Panem fought for its own independence. Frankly, he doesn't sound like he cares much. "Do I sound like an alien?"

"Yes," Katniss confesses. "But it's not just the accent. Some of the things you do and say..." Only this morning, Harry told her a story about three brothers who met Death on a bridge in a distant land. It sounded like a tale meant for children, but now Katniss is less sure. There are no certainties when it comes to Harry. He's a question mark without the question. 

Harry props himself on an elbow, brows arching as he gazes down at her. It should be weird to have a man make her the undivided focus of his attention, but maybe because she's taken him to bed, it almost feels like Harry deserves the privilege. "What," he asks, "is so strange about that?"

"You don't hunt. You don't keep any weapons, yet you live in the woods." Katniss could go on. She doesn't. "I don't know what you could possibly have to trade that's precious enough you've managed to buy a tent and a bed and... I don't even think I've seen you gathering firewood and yet it's never cold in here." 

"You're very inquisitive tonight," Harry muses. "I must be losing my touch." And as if to prove them both wrong, he coaxes her to arousal with his lips and hands until Katniss is too desperate for his touch to speak. 

He takes her on all fours that night, tongue lapping eagerly at her spine with every single thrust of his hips. Katniss gladly forgets her interrogation for a while, but Harry's ministrations exhaust no one more than Harry himself. By time he's drifted off, snoring beside her into the early hours of morning, Katniss' thoughts take to wandering again. 

In her heart of hearts, she knows full well she shouldn't do it. There are some lines that are better not flirted with, some boundaries better not crossed, but she tells herself there's a small chance Harry is a Capitol spy; rumors of a shadowy resistance movement have been circulating around the Seam since Katniss returned to the district. It's not so unlikely that Snow's former acolytes might be consolidating a counterrevolution. Where better to start than here, in the birthplace of the insurgency? 

Katniss knows she shouldn't it, but temptation won't let her sleep.

She starts by searching Harry's hastily discarded clothes. Unsurprisingly, she unveils no hidden pockets, no microphones or blades or any kind. The seams are frayed and the fabric is soft with use; nothing about it suggests Capitol opulence. She checks Harry's cloak, too, but the fabric reveals no further secrets. There are many trunks around the fluid, canopy walls of the tent, but their latches hold fast when Katniss tries to pry them open. Only the chest at the foot of the bed gives way to her efforts. It opens with a metallic squeak and Katniss feels her breath catch. She doesn't dare look up to check if Harry has heard it.

She must be quick. There, between a change of clothes and a stack of leather bound books, she sees the short, straight stick Harry menaced her with when they first met. It's conspicuously wrapped in cloth, much like a cherished possession. Katniss lets her fingers trace the soft, chiseled wood. It's too short to be a bolt or an arrow, almost like a—Her mind rebels against the possibility. That's fairytale nonsense. 

The trunk lid shuts with a tell-tell creak. Katniss inches away, hooking her pants and underwear with her foot, and quickly tugging them on. 

"Kat?" Harry's voice is thick with sleep, but he's not such a good actor that Katniss doesn't suspect he's been awake a while. "What're you doing?"

 _Betraying your trust_ , she thinks, guilt like a stone in her belly. "Heading home before you kick me out," she says instead, braiding her hair absently before shrugging on last night's shirt. Any kind of armor will do.

Harry props himself up on his elbows. "I'd never do that." He sounds so earnest, so sure of himself. It's a little scary. 

"If you say so." Katniss doesn't say _wait until you get tired of me_. They don't have that kind of relationship; there's no future for them. "I'll be back tonight." It's become something of a given: she shows up with fresh game, Harry cooks and then they spend the night frolicking in bed without a care in the world, save for bringing each other pleasure. Perhaps that's why Katniss makes a point to emphasize she'll return again tonight. Like there's a chance she wouldn't, if she had something better to do.

"I'd like that," says Harry. 

She has her bow and arrow in hand and she's almost made it to threshold when he calls her name: "—did you find what you were looking for?" Harry cuts a strange silhouette at the far end of the tent, all pale skin almost blanched to alabaster. Tousled, raven hair hangs in his green eyes and he looks almost—disappointed. 

Katniss holds that knowing gaze and still shakes her head. 

*

Harry's fingers are tight on her hips as he slams her down into his lap. Katniss tries to compensate by pushing up against the floor, but she can't seem to get a good angle and Harry isn't being half as accommodating as usual. He forces moans out of her mouth like a vendetta. He won't let her kiss him or touch him; he flattens his cheek against the wing of a shoulder and stays like that until Katniss forgets why she was ever trying to best him in this. 

He makes her come hard and spills inside her with a guttural cry. Afterwards, their sweat-slick bodies drop down to the bed with a fresh inch of space between them. It's a bridgeless gap, though Katniss throws an arm across his ribcage and Harry tangles their legs together. 

"You never told me how the story ends," he murmurs against her collarbones. The bites he laid there last night have turned purple and red; Katniss fingered them as she bathed this morning, but it was bittersweet pleasure. Her hands are too rough, too calloused to sow pleasure.

"What story's that?" They've told each other folk tales by the dozen and wasted many an hour in bed letting their minds wander over insignificant, fanciful legends. 

Harry sighs. "The one about the boy; the fairytale your father told you when you were little. Last I heard, he was to meet the Dark Lord in battle. What happens next?"

Katniss hardly knows, but then most of her storytelling so far has been an exercise in fabrication. "He defeats him, of course," she tells Harry, because he asked for a happy ending. "All his friends are there, and his parents, too—they speak to him from beyond the veil and they stand with him when he fights the Dark Lord. Most would have clutched the resurrection stone tightly in their fist, you know, but not the Boy who Lived." She's taken the liberty of lifting certain elements from tales Harry has shared with her—like the story of the three brothers—and injecting them into her own fable. The resurrection stone, for example, is shameless theft. 

"But if he drops it," Harry whispers, "won't he die?"

"He would..." Katniss hasn't thought that far. She has to think on her feet: "But the old wizard—remember him?—is waiting for him in the place between this world and the next and he sends him back. They're wizards and they can do that. Besides, it's not his time yet." (It's never the time.) "So the boy comes back to life and the Dark Lord can't believe his eyes. They fight for the last time."

Harry props himself up on his elbows. "And the boy defeats the Dark Lord?"

"And he lives happily ever after. Marries a pretty girl—maybe even his best friend's little sister—and he gets to see his own children and grandchildren return to school in a world restored to peace." Katniss traces a finger down Harry's crooked, lightning scar. "The end."

The tilt of Harry's head puts her fingers within reach of his kiss-swollen lips. "Pretty wise, your dad."

"He was..."

Something in her tone must tell Harry not to press, because all he says to that is "I'm sorry." Katniss doesn't know how to pretend she's made peace with losing her family, so she says nothing, only drags Harry closer, as if by clutching him tight she'll have filled the hollow places at her core. That's another lie, but it's not the Capitol's. 

"There's another end to the story," Harry breathes after a while, as Katniss has begun to drift into sleep. "I remember now... The version I know of this story goes a little differently there at the end."

"Still a happy ending?" Katniss mumbles halfheartedly.

Harry huffs a low, lukewarm chuckle. "I haven't decided yet." Fingertips pin a rebellious strand of hair behind her ear, trace the shell until she shivers. "See, after he meets the Dark Lord in battle the first time, the boy discovers he doesn’t die from the deadly curse. Everyone's weeping for him and the war seems lost, but he's not dead. That's when he realizes what the prophecy really means. Neither can live while the other survives. But once one of them dies..."

Katniss blinks awake slowly. "The other can never follow."

"Yeah. So the Boy who Lived will live forever if he kills the Dark Lord. That's a lot of responsibility to heap on the shoulders of a teenager... but the world's in luck. He's a good soldier. He does what must be done to stop the Dark Lord from hurting more people." Harry's smile is tentative and a little sad. Katniss doesn't know why, but she feels compelled to take him in her arms. They kiss and touch, their bodies pressed to one another with the stirrings of passion, but in the end the exhaustion claims Katniss before she can put up much of a front. 

It's a restless sleep that takes her, with dreams of fire and death, snakes and golden chalices; she's glad to wake.

Harry still sleeps soundly when she leaves his bed. He doesn't tell her goodbye. Katniss doesn't think to rouse him. Their late night conversation follows her all the way home, like a beast stalking her through the forest. Katniss can all but see its amber eyes, its flashing, bone-white white fangs. 

_The boy was a good soldier_ , Harry said. Katniss knows a little about what that's like. She knows what it means to win a war and lose the peace. If she didn't know better, she'd say Harry was mocking her. He wouldn't do that, though. Harry's too good-natured for derision and too soft-spoken not to choose his words with care. 

Harry, she realizes, was speaking from experience. That stick he keeps in the unlocked chest isn't just a stick. 

She gets as far as the Victor's Village before doubt becomes shock, becomes the bone-deep conviction that she must turn back. If Harry is who she thinks, then he's watched his family and all his friends go. The story's been around for decades, if not centuries. He must be as lonely as she feels. There are worse reasons to hitch your wagon to another's. 

Foliage crackles like kindling beneath her boots. She almost takes a tumble as jealous branches pull at her clothes and hair, but this is her forest and Katniss has never had trouble keeping to her feet in familiar territory. She hits the clearing like a tornado touching down, only the place she left less than an hour ago is gone. The tent has vanished; the fragrant smoke of the cast iron brazier barely gusts in the changing winds. 

There's no sign of Harry or their bed. He's just—gone. 

Katniss can't believe it. She also can't believe there was ever anything here beyond trees and scuttling rodents; the evidence is altogether absent. Fingers press against the bruises on her hips. Those at least still hurt when prodded. 

It gets hard to breathe for a long, protracted moment, but Katniss has no tears left to shed. The girl who was a soldier has wept enough. 

She doesn’t hurry home; her footsteps drag her there independently of thought or desire. She can't help wonder if she hallucinated Harry from the moment they met. It would be simpler if he were a Capitol-born creation, something her mind made up to digest the horrors she's endured. 

Her heart lurches when she makes out the silhouette of a boy in the Victor's Village, sitting on a duffel bag outside her door. She thinks _perhaps_. But it's not Harry. His hair is too blond, his shoulders too broad from heaving sacks of flour all through the years. There's such hope in his eyes. 

Katniss sets one foot in front of the other: directionless, but always going forward. She's always been a good soldier. 

 

_fin_


End file.
